


Cloud Mountain

by Okumen



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: I don't know what I'm doing, M/M, Missions, Shippy Gen, but this happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-02
Updated: 2018-01-02
Packaged: 2019-02-27 07:11:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13243155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Okumen/pseuds/Okumen
Summary: There are a lot of strange planets in the universe. Even the fluffy kind.





	Cloud Mountain

**Author's Note:**

> I spent new years catching up on Voltron, and then this ship happened, and one of the photos from [this](https://mymodernmet.com/elio-pallard-playing-with-clouds/) photo collection appeared on my tumblr dashboard and, well, then this fic happened.

“You mean that that’s the place we’re going to?”

“Yes.”

“ _That’s_ Planet Farah?”

“Obviously.”

“You’re serious?”

“Matthew,” Lotor sighed. “How many times do I have to tell you that we are at the right planet? That is, without a doubt, Planet Farah. Now will you stop asking? I would like to land.” Matt had been asking him more or less the same thing for the last few doboshes already. And Lotor was getting tired of having to confirm the same answer over and over.

“You can land on it!”

“ _Matthew._ ”

“Yes, right, yeah, sorry, sure.”

It was a bother, landing. Not because it was difficult (finding a landing site took another few doboshes, but that wasn’t it) but because Matt kept distracting him with questions on how it was possible, and how a planet like this could even exist, and so many more questions.

Despite Lotor’s repeated assurances that _yes, it was safe to walk on the ground,_ and _no, you won’t fall through_ Lotor had to step onto the planet first, before Matt followed.

He put one foot on the white planet surface, and pressed it down. Lifted it. Pressed down. Looked at the puffs of fine mist that rose around his foot. “It’s so squishy!” he declared after a full half dobosh. Lotor rolled his eyes. “I hadn’t noticed.”

Matt ignored Lotor’s sarcasm. “It’s the fluffiest planet ever!”

“I’m happy that you’re excited, but we still need to find that falanium.”

“Lotor! It’s a cloud! It’s a planet that’s a fluffy, bouncy, squishy _cloud!_ ”

“So?”

“So!” Matt spread his arms wide, as if emphasising his point. “We’re literally _walking on clouds!_

With a sigh Lotor resigned to his fate. Matt would clearly take his time with this as well. “Is there any significance to that?” he asked. He grasped Matt by an arm as he did, and closed the door to the ship once the human was out of the way. Matt nodded, seemingly not bothered by being dragged around. But if Lotor didn’t, they would be stuck on this planet longer than necessary.

“Metaphorically it means that you’re really happy. And who wouldn’t be happy when walking on clouds! It's like we're walking on cotton candy." Lotor did not understand where a metaphor like that had come from. "Personally I am feeling a bit irritated right now, actually."

“But why? This is so amazing!”

“To you, perhaps,” Lotor stopped to look around for the easiest way to climb down into the gorge that their ship had been too big to land in. “but to me it’s not so remarkable.”

“Is that a _river?_ ” Matt’s eyes were so wide that Lotor faintly wondered if they might fall out of their sockets. Humans were fragile, were they not? It wasn’t an impossibility. “It’s _white!_ ”

“I’m aware.” He let go of Matt, and started making his way down the cliff. Solid rock was easier. The soft rock that this planet was made of might look cushy but that simply made it harder to get a good grip on it. He caught sight of Matt following him. Halfway down into the gorge, Matt wobbed because of a strong gust of wind. Lotor put a hand on his back to steady him, then he continued down as he pointed out, “If you fall, the landing will not be soft.”

“Ah, yeah, I wasn’t intending to fall. But I guess who does, right?” Matt chuckled, and Lotor huffed, shaking his head. He wasn’t unsteady as a climber, or unpracticed, but the winds could cause some treachery to the balance sometimes. Because of that, Lotor kept an eye on Matt while they climbed down the rest of the way. Because it would be troublesome if Matt fell and hurt himself, and the Paladins and the Princess would be back to being only suspicious toward him.

Once back on solid ground - as solid as the ground could get at least - Matt was quick to go to inspect the river. “It’s like milk,” he said, white liquid slipping between his gloved fingers, and Lotor sighed, casting a glance up at the sky and the stars and the velvet sky above. These troublesome siblings and their unending energy for new and unfamiliar things.

“Matthew, it is less than three varga until the mist gets thicker. We should find the falanium.”

Reluctantly, Matt got back up and followed Lotor along the thin trail between the cliff wall and the river. “How do you know these stuff about this planet anyway?”

“I have been in the area before, and people generally knows about falanium and its source.”

“Not on Earth.”

“Clearly not.”

“So you’ve been in the area but have you been _here_ before? On Farah.”

“Perhaps.”

“You’re not very forthcoming.”

“You ask too many questions.”

“Because I’m curious.”

“Is there a button to press that will turn that off?”

“Nope.”

“Joy.”

They continued to bicker, though Lotor wasn’t as annoyed as he made himself out to be to Matt. Roughly a fourth of a varga passed before they reached the mouth of one of the caves that held the falanium. Not far in, Matt let out a startled yelp and lept back. Lotor cast a glance his way. “It’s only Foffers.”

“Fo--- _foffers?_ ”

"That _is_ what I said, yes." Lotor stooped down to pick up one of the small creatures scuttling about on the squishy ground. He put it in Matt's hands. “They’re seriously called _foffers?_ ” he asked. 

"They are." Lotor started to pull him along once more. "Why?" Matt kept looking at the little creature that scuttled about across his palms. It was about the size of his pinky, had fluffy white fur, and eight tiny black feet with four little toes on each. “ _You_ using a cute sounding word like _foffer_ seems out of place to me.” He sounds amused and like he was smiling across the radio, but Lotor didn’t look at his face. “Is that so?” They were nothing remarkable to him. They were only small creatures indigenous to only Planet Farah, but they had spread to other planets as pets to children a long time ago. They were less popular these days though. Some people even saw them as pests.

“They’re so cute.”

“And you keep on almost stepping on them.”

Matt finally tore his gaze away from the floofer he was holding, and down at the ground. They were almost indiscernible, but they were there, running around among the shadows in the cave.

"There are so many of them."

"The more there are the closer we are to the falanium," Lotor informed him. "We're here for that, not for everything else."

"But everything else is interesting too-- _is that it?_ " Matt sounded absolutely amazed.

They had reached a section of the cave that glowed, with a faint white light. It pulsed slowly, like the steady beat of a heart.

"Woah..."

The foffer crawled out of Matt's hands and up his arm, but Mike's focus had shifted over to the slightly more solid rocks embedded in the cave walls.

"This planet. Is. So. Cool!"

Lotor winced. "And you're loud."

He moved over to the wall to start to pull the rocks out and put them in one of the bags they had brought along. The rocks were not stuck very hard, thanks to the consistency of the entire planet. With intrigued eagerness, Matt joined him.

It took longer than he had hoped it would to fill the bags. But eventually they were ready to return. The mist had risen a little, and it swirled around their ankles.

They followed the river, sometimes splashing its white liquid when they misstepped because it was hard to see where to put ones feet. It had risen to their knees once they were at the place where they had climbed down.

They had to walk through the mist for some time, once they were out of the gorge.

Once they were back inside the ship and had loaded their precious cargo, Matt flopped down on the floor. "That! Was! Amazing!" he exclaimed excitedly.

"You have said similar things already." Lotor sat down in the pilot seat, and removed his helmet. He leaned his head back against the headrest, and looked out the front window at the thick mist that obscured the vision entirely. To wait until it cleared or not...

As he thought, he heard the quiet humming of a melody, and, eventually, words.

“Chase faded days, with eyes that cannot see. I wanna feel it again, washing over me. Discover all of you, one moment at a time. Taste smell secret cell, your soul it touches mine. I wanna feel up, hope knows I need it this way. Like I'm walking on clouds, I can't come down, even if you wanted me to. I can't come down, even if you wanted me to.”

Lotor looked over his shoulder, att Matt still lying on the floor. Right when he was about to ask him what he was doing, Matt abruptly sat up and fell silent. He was looking at Lotor with those wide, excited eyes. Matt got up to his feet and came over to Lotor. 

"There's a foffer on your chair, I mean in your hair!"

Lotor reached back, searching for the creature, but he was stopped by Matt's hand grasping his wrist. "It looks like a hair decoration, it's cute."

"Cute," Lotor repeated dubiously. "What are you doing?"

"Photo evidence," Matt replied.

"You don't need photo evidence," Lotor protested, but Matt seemed determined to keep the picture. "You think it's gonna clear up anytime soon?"

"I think not. It will be another few vargas until it's gone. Can you take this thing and throw it out now?"

Matt picked the little creature out of Lotor's hair. It's toes caught in a few strands for a few moments and Lotor winced. "We can't keep it?" He patted Lotor's hair where the foffer had pulled.

"Why would you want to do that?"

"It's cute and so soft."

"And that is a reason?"

"We're keeping you, aren't we?"

Lotor looked at Matt in silence. That did not make any sense.

Eventually he sighed. "Fine." Matt beamed at him. "I'll even feed it and walk it myself," he said, as if that would settle everything. Lotor scoffed. Matt headed for his seat, and as he turned he patted Lotor on the head again. Why he was doing that didn't make much sense. "Don't worry, I'll feed and walk you too."

And he put the foffer on top of their bags and sat down in his seat. "Alright then, let's go back to base!"

Lotor looked at him for a few ticks, then he turned back to look ahead. He turned on switches, deciding that they were leaving despite the mist still being thick. He needed some privacy to think.

**Author's Note:**

> The planet they visit, Planet Farah (and the falanium that they’re after), is named after Princess Fala, Allura’s Golion counterpart. _Foffer_ comes from _fluff ball_.
> 
> The song Matt is singing is [_Walking on Clouds_ by Tiësto](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wu0TdPD6Nc0). I’m not really sure if the punctuation is right.


End file.
